Every Hero card says "When you level up, increase your Hit Points by 2, your AC by 1, and your surge value by 1..." I've been interpretating this as just a clarification for my, e.g. Dwarf Fighter, going from 8 to 10 HP total, not regaining two HP tokens when she levels up.

But today it happened of a player having his health full (8 HP with said Dwarf Fighter) and leveling up — all of a sudden he had 2 HP missing!

Tracking hit points is actually supposed to go the other way around: You place tokens on your Hero Card when you take damage. So in your example, the dwarf wouldn't have any tokens on his card - and he wouldn't have any tokens on the card after levelling up, either.However, it would now take 2 more points of damage to take the dwarf out, thus basically gaining two HP.

I'm playing the same way you do, so taking tokens off the card (or flipping them over to the black side in case of Castle Ravenloft).

yea i was a bit confused about this too at first, mainly because of how the hit point tokens, or should I say the "damage" tokens for the heroes actually look like shields and the ones for the monsters do look like little impacts.I still play as removing the HP, just now i remember to increase 2 HP at each level up, which as a certain DING! feel to it. XD